Tee off!

So I’ve been on vacation, and one of my vacation resolutions was to not spend so much time in front of the computer. That’s why you haven’t heard from me for about 2 weeks.

But I never resolved not to go outdoors or to see interesting things there, and I did see a few, and now I’m back so I’ll be telling you about one or two of them.

Let’s start with this mushroom/toadstool/fungus (Do these words mean different things? If they do, it’s a lesson my mother neglected to teach me.) I spotted whilst picking up Chinese food in Annville.

I thought this mushroom's name should be perhaps Titleist, but mycologist friend Josh Herr tells me it's Lepiota procera.

My knowledge of the entire fungi kingdom is pretty limited, because I always considered them unappetizing if not potentially inedible so I never bothered to learn much about them. So, my point in getting down on my belly to snap this image with my iPhone was to make a funny about how much this particular specimen looks like a golf ball on a tee.

And so it does.

But my good friend Josh Herr, who has made the study of fungi and especially their ecological interaction with trees his vocation, tells me this is Lepiota procera, one of the good guys because not only can you eat it, but it’s yummy. (I’ll be taking his word on that.) His endorsement comes with this caveat, however: If you find one that looks a lot like this but has a greenish tint on the underside (where, apparently, not unlike humans, its spores are at), beware: Rather than Lepiota procera it’s probably Chlorophyllum rhacodes. He’s a bad guy, Josh says, and if you eat him you might not die but for a few hours you might wish you had.

I’ll be taking his word on that, as well. I’m just not a mushroom guy, and I’ve always believed it’s because I grew up a runner in mushroom country. Without getting too graphic, I’ve smelled where mushrooms — at least cultivated ones — come from, and it’s a place from which nothing that comes is going to get anywhere near my mouth.

I might even go so far as to say that the premise of this blog — that It’s Better Outdoors — does not apply in mushroom country. Just sayin’.